


What Is Worth Fighting For

by Dragomir



Series: Mirror, Mirror [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood Magic, Dysfunctional Family, Halward is a good but horrifically misguided father, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Torture, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragomir/pseuds/Dragomir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Dorian comes back to himself, he is halfway to the border, practically naked, and bleeding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is Worth Fighting For

**Author's Note:**

> A short look at the incidents leading to Dorian leaving Tevinter.
> 
> Set shortly pre-canon.

He can’t sleep. Can’t sleep, can’t sleep can’tsleepcan’tsleepcantsleepcant—

Dorian wakes up with a pained gasp and chokes on a scream. He writhes awkwardly to disentangle himself from the sheets and leaps away from his bed. The linens catch fire and he does start screaming. Slaves rush in from the antechamber and douse the linens with buckets of sand and buckets of water. One of them forces him to inhale the scent of cinnamon and cloves and eat shreds of sharp-tasting pickled ginger until he stops shaking.

It is the sixth time in a week that he has been unable to sleep.

He does not sleep again that night.

His father finds him out in the garden at dawn, working through forms, hollow-eyed and shaking. Dorian does not acknowledge the man until the sun is fully risen and he collapses to his knees from exhaustion. He looks blearily up at Halward Pavus, dark bags under grey eyes highlighting just how little he has slept.

“There is a light breakfast waiting, if you can eat it,” Halward says gently, holding his hands out to his son. Dorian shakes, even as he allows his father to pull him off the stones of the back courtyard. He eats the food, and doesn’t vomit over the smell of the pork his parents eat.

(He vomits later, and counts it as a small victory that at least it didn’t happen at breakfast.)

There is a party. It’s for him. He has been rescued from the Qunari, brought home and hailed as a hero. He is the Hero of the Line, the last battle-mage of Seheron’s Fall. It does not matter that so much ground was lost in Seheron. It does not matter that he is one of twelve surviving battle-mages who have been bled in that war. It does not matter that he is drunk, ill tempered, and openly (loudly) carouses with young lords who want to be close to such a dangerous spark (to prove that they are braver than their fellows, daring to touch someone so volatile). He is a battle-mage who survived Seheron. He survived eight and a half weeks of torture under the Qunari and emerged from the flaming wreckage of their re-education camp. He is a _survivor_ , and _everyone_ wants to say that they are his friend.

Maevaris Tilani is the only one who can touch him. Dorian lets Mae touch him. He lets her drag him into a private alcove and lets her pet his hair while he shakes. He doesn’t check the drink she gives him for poison, and gorges on the plates of food her servant brings. Mae holds his hair back when he vomits again later that night, when the smoke becomes cloying and the wine makes his memory hazy.

He can’t sleep. It is not safe.

The bed is on fire, and he doesn’t scream. The slaves do not arrive in time to put the blaze out. Dorian cradles his burned arms to his chest and stares at the wreckage of his room, eyes hollow and blank. His mouth is still open in a silent scream when the slaves fetch his father.

No one can touch him without injury.

He is getting worse.

Dorian stops sleeping. He drinks. When the drink is not enough to calm his mind, he goes to the Vivazzi Plaza where this nightmare all started and dances until he collapses onto a chair with two fine-looking boys – a Soporati and a Liberati – in his arms.

Sex does not help. He panics when his pants are drawn down. The Liberati loses an eye. Dorian pays for treatment. He pays far too much for both beautiful, terrified young men to remain silent. He shakes and can’t stop shaking. His father’s guards find him on the docks three days later, barefoot, bare-chested, blank-eyed and almost catatonic as he stares out over the harbor.

Drinking and carousing are not helping. He is getting worse. His father suggested drugs. Dorian sets the summerhouse on fire when he cannot wake up from the nightmare of his mouth being sewn shut with thick leather cords.

He is not going to get better.

Dorian shudders when people get too close. His paranoia is too high now for even his father to approach him. Felix cannot approach him either, and Felix is his dearest friend. When he can differentiate between the nightmares writhing behind his eyes and the real world where he is in the Imperium, he clings to Felix and begs forgiveness. He sobs like a small child. He is not getting better.

Blood magic. Blood, red, thick, cloying, choking his senses. Sweet, sickly sweet, cheap wine on his tongue and drowning his senses. Blood, blood, blood…

Dorian stares numbly at his wrist as blood drips down his forearm. Blood. So red, so thick and sweet and cloying. Metal, copper, a tang of metal and death on his tongue when he laves over the cut with his tongue to clean away the blood. His father finds him later, trying to gouge the poison and corruption out of his arms with a knife. The elder Pavus takes the knife from him and gentles him out of the dark room he has taken to hiding in. Dorian follows, numb and hollow and feeling like a shell or an empty vessel and doesn’t notice the blood dripping down his arm or the mangled flesh where his teeth did what the knife could not.

Soft. White. Gentle hands, firm pressure. Dorian stares numbly down at the ground as his arms are wrapped in bandages. He was not practicing blood magic. He was…

He was…

He…

Dorian doesn’t know what he was doing.

His father puts him under house arrest. Dorian prowls around the winter estate, choking on the paranoia clawing in his throat and veins. The slaves assigned to watch him check him for knives and threaten him – they have been told to subdue him and tie him up if he attempts to harm himself again. He does not tell them that he was trying to get the Qunari poison out of his veins. (He does not even understand _why_ he was trying to do that. There was no poison…)

The Templars who follow him on orders from Magister Pavus send Dorian into blind panics. They smell of nothing where the Fade should be. They smell of copper and blood and the sharp tang of the metal that the Arvaarads’ control rods were made of. He immolates two and singes a third before he is subdued. Dorian screams and writhes in his bonds, begging in a mixture of Qunlat and Trade when he forgets that he is in Tevinter and not in a cell in the Qunari-held sections of Seheron.

He spends more time drugged than sober after that.

His mother, Lady Pavus, comes to visit him at the secluded estate. Dorian is drugged and can barely mumble a greeting before he loses his strength and flops back on the mattress. She sits next to him and strokes his hair like she hasn’t since he was very small, humming softly. His mother has _never_ sung or hummed him a lullaby, and Dorian tries to claw his way out of the caramel-thick fog in his brain to demand an answer. He can’t, and he is limp in his mother’s grip as she hums a lullaby and strokes his hair. There are tears on his face, and Dorian doesn’t know if they are his or his mother’s.

Dorian drifts. He forgets. Sometimes he thinks he is back on Seheron – sometimes in the army camp with his unit, sometimes in that dank cell with a constant cycle of torturers trying to break him. Sometimes he is fifteen again, running away to join the Imperial Army. When he is lucid enough to realize that he is at the winter estate, there is a slave there with drugged water and Dorian drifts away again. He can’t tell up from down anymore, and he has such _terrible_ nightmares. But there is no more fire. No more burning. He drifts, alone and terrified and without his magic.

His father is there.

Dorian blinks blearily up at his father. The bed has changed. It is not the soft mattress that feels like molasses, or the hard daybed he sometimes stumbles to. It is not the plush carpet he would have fallen onto if he’d rolled out of bed during a nightmare. Strange. He blinks and whines incoherently, a garbled question dying in his throat. His father strokes his hair, whispering something he cannot hear through the cotton stuffed in his ears.

“…Patrem…,” Dorian croaks.

There is blood splashing across his face. Blood, thick, cloying, tangy, too-sweet-and-stifling blood. He writhes. His wrists and ankles are held down. He cannot move.

_Be calm, little Saarebas. Submit. The Qun will protect you. Asit tal-eb. Anaan esaam Qun._

Dorian screams. Blood in his mouth, choking, sweet, cloying and smothering him as he tries to escape. “Patrem!” he wails, feeling small and frail like he is five years old again. “Patrem, help me!” Tears pool in his eyes and he can’t stop screaming, slipping into Qunlat as he begs. “Katohkatohkatohkathokatohkatoh! Maraas! Maraas asit tal-eb! Katoh!”

His father strokes his face again and Dorian flinches, a pained wail clawing out of his throat. He wants his papa. Papa, mama, someone, anyone, please help me. He sobs. “Nolo hoc! Nolo hoc, quaeso, quaeso! Ego mutata anima meo! Ego mutata anima meo!” He screams. He doesn’t want to be a battle-mage. He wants to go home. The instructors hold him down and beat him while everyone else laughs and calls him a coward, weak and pathetic and fit only as food for a Qunari. He just wants to go home…

By the time Dorian comes back to himself, he is halfway to the border, half-naked, and bleeding.

**Author's Note:**

> And this is why Dorian set his father on fire.
> 
> Translations:  
> Ego mutata anima meo - I changed my mind  
> Quaeso - Please (lit. 'I beg you')  
> Patrem - Father, papa  
> Nolo hoc - I do not want this  
> Maraas asit tal-eb - Nothing it is to be (This is not what it should be) ~~Some liberties have been taken and a sledge-hammer liberally applied to Qunlat. Dorian was trying to tell his interrogators that they don't have to do this.~~


End file.
